Final Portfolio Presentation
ISTE Standards for Coaches, By: Nicole Zagada
Standard 1 - Visionary Leadership
For ISTE-Coaches Standard 1C, I shared a digital success story that occurred with my students during an internship program over the summer of 2015. It was a great story to share because of the minimal amount of technology that was utilized over the summer to promote awareness about the lack of opportunities of youth employment for NYC students. Regardless of the amount of technology the students had to work with, they still overcame the obstacles and was able to accomplish their goals of creating awareness to companies and other high school students about what can be done to maximize internship opportunities for a successful workforce.
Advocacy: Ed Tech Success Story
There is a lack of opportunities for youth employment for our New York City students, which results in the deficiency of experience required for young adults to obtain a job after high school. This is a story about the collaboration between the students of New York City and the campaign to build a more sustainable relationship with industry partners for internships, job-shadowing opportunities, and providing students with the training to become career ready upon graduating high school. So, how can we make this happen?
Technology is the bridge that helps connect both of these two worlds together, allowing each to witness the viewpoints from a different perspective. Through the use of technology, industry partners are able to see what resources New York City students need in order to be qualified as career ready. On the other hand, students will be able to see what the industry requires from them in order to be potential employees in the future. Through extensive research, online collaboration, and online communication, NYC public school students are able to create awareness and strategies to inspire companies to support the increase of youth employment for a sustainable workforce.
During the summer, 15 of my students participated in a summer internship known as the Career and Technical Education (CTE) Summer Scholars program. The students worked at various IT companies, since that is their CTE major in the school (either Computer Repair Technology or CISCO Networking). Monday through Wednesday, students worked for 5 hours at their assigned companies and Thursday through Friday, I was their instructor, teaching them work-readiness skills as well as technical skills. Through our discussions throughout the summer, we read through articles on the statistics on the lack of summer job opportunities for NYC students. We discussed this “catch-22” situation; Students are denied a job after high school due to the lack of work experience but employers do not provide students with the opportunity to get a job during high school to get the experience they need?
We wanted to take things a bit further and decided to take on a project to campaign for more strategies and ideas to put the word out there for companies to take students just as interns in order to prepare the future workforce. How can we go about doing that with no computers or laptops in the classroom? So, we decided to split up into groups and borrow some laptops from the school. I divided the class into 3 groups of 5 students to start their own “agency” to create a way to advertise, campaign, and showcase how they would create awareness to promote youth employment to NYC students and to the companies that can provide these job opportunities for students. Only about 5 laptops were given to the students, so not every single student was able to use technology but one given person of their team was responsible for that task. The amount of work students used to research and collaborate collectively online while in class and at home was extraordinary. In the 4 weeks they had to complete this project, they researched the different companies they could reach out to, used specific tools to specify which NYC boroughs had the least amount of youth employment numbers, and the social media used to create awareness and to publicize their goal. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram handles were created to reach out to the Mayor, the Chancellor, and other well-known companies and city officials. Their creativity led to different types of hashtags to be incorporated into their pictures, statuses, and news feed for it to be spread across the city. We wanted it to spread like wildfire.
The technology the students used to help create awareness and promote youth employment in NYC, helped them tremendously as well as the companies they presented to. Students had the opportunity to collaborate with adults, different students on their ideas, and most importantly, they were able to meet and speak with the Chancellor, Carmen Farina! The students’ demeanors changed throughout the internship. For instance, the quiet and shy ones were able to speak up, the webiste they used to find statistics on employment rates in NYC helped students to share that resource with their teachers and utilize it in their classes for the regular school year. Students were proud to create this work and be able to be treated as young adults and not just seen as high school students of the NYC public school system. With the lack of technology these students were given, they still overcame the obstacles and completed the tasks provided. The students were able to create their business to promote awareness on youth employment in NYC and speak to important leaders and administrators on their findings.
Why am I sharing this story with you? This story in particular is meaningful because since the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program funding has been discontinued, it is a huge disservice to our students to complete the work they need without the appropriate tools to get it done. Yes, they received laptops but only five were provided. If 15 were provided, perhaps more work could have been accomplished in a shorter period of time or maybe students could have reached out to companies and students from other districts, counties, or states to research how they can spread the word about youth employment. Students were able to learn how to use the resources given to them in a productive way, regardless of how much technology they had. They learned how to think outside the box, interact with the adults and other students through social media, and were able to collaborate online with each other using the various tools used to support their cause. Technology is constantly growing and rapidly changing and so are our students. We must find a way to increase the amount of technology to be used by our students, our future leaders, to enhance their learning, engagement, and motivation to better prepare them to be successful young adults.
Standard 2 - Teaching, Learning, & Assessments
The artifact for ISTE-Coaches Standard 2E is an interactive video lesson I created on the topic of curriculum mapping using Zaption (http://www.zaption.com). Zaption meets this specific standard because it provides students with the ability to advance in the video, go back in the video, and answer questions throughout the lesson to test for their understanding. It is student-paced, which allows for differentiation within the classroom, targeting all of the diverse student learning needs.
Standard 3 - Digital Age Learning Environments
The artifact I have used for ISTE-Coaches Standard 3B is a link to my Symbaloo resources page. This website is free and is a central location for both teachers and students to save all their digital resources within this digital library. You can organize it however you wish by location, color coding, or description – it is completely up to you! This resource can be accessed by going to http://edu.symbaloo.com. I have created this Symbaloo to share with both instructors and students to reference back to either in school or at home.
- The resources on the left (green) are tools that can be used with students. These resources include Wordle, Pixton Comics, Google Docs, VoiceThread, and Voki just to name a few. It is an easy way to access all tools that can be used for online collaboration or perhaps students can use it in their other classes.
- The resources on the top row on the right (blue) are free various storage media sites that any instructor or student can use. These include Media Fire, EverNote, Dropbox, and Edmodo.
- The resources beneath the top row on the right (white) are important communication-based websites and links that students, teachers, and parents can access to keep up to date with any work. The sites include the school’s website, Ms. Zagada’s Google site, a link to the CompTIA A+ certification standards and the College Board website.
- The resources in purple are free online in-class tools that can be used to assess student learning.
- The resources located on the bottom row (red) are various rubric websites and templates that can be accessed.
Standard 4 - Professional Development & Program Evaluation
Standard 5 - Digital Citizenship
*The password to view the video is: NYIT
Standard 6 - Content Knowledge & Professional Growth
Agenda for the Google PD
Accessing Your Google Drive
Creating a New Class in Google Classroom
Contact Information
Computer Technology Instructor @ Queens Vocational & Technical HS
EDIT-695: Practicum & Seminar
Dr. Sarah McPherson
Email: nzagada@queensvoc.org
Website: http://queensvoc.org
Location: 3702 47th Avenue Long Island City, NY 11101
Phone: 718-937-3010
Twitter: @NZagada